Naming Rights at Thomas Dane Gallery Artists space/project (description)

Open House: 13th September, 6-8:30pm. There will be no private view on 21st August.
Exhibition Dates: 22nd August -20th September 2017

Naming Rights
(artists project space)
http://www.namingrights.info/

There are single-artist exhibitions and events. There are no private views. It is privately funded and runs on a shoestring. It is not for profit. Local artists and international artists are in the programme. In the words of Phyllida Barlow, “It is a nothing space” …where doubt and permeability are fostered. The materials of each event or exhibition accrue to the next.

Founded in 2015, is located in a culturally diverse public housing estate in Central London. Specific object-based and procedural conditions are intended to bring economic and aesthetic contradictions materially to bear on the art and its constituents.
Advisory Board: François Chantala, Melissa Gronlund and Alex Sainsbury
Founder: Dustin Ericksen

To produce the exhibition Naming Rights at Thomas Dane Gallery, the arcane rules of an artists run project space are displaced into the context of a West End commercial gallery. The exhibition will process these seemingly conflicting material systems, resolving into a presentation of works by artists including: Juliette Blightman, Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, Matthew Collings and Emma Biggs, Liz Craft, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Charles Gaines, Jennifer Moon, Jeff Ono, Simon Popper, Lari Pittman, Mike Rogers, Dean Sameshima, Paul Thek (b.1933, d.1988), and Milly Thompson.
For the first three weeks of the exhibition, each artist's works will be shown as a solo presentation in the main exhibition space for a little more than one day each in turn. Then on the 12th of September, all the works will return together, re-placed to their ‘original position’. Naming Rights’ office and studio will use the rear gallery as a publicly accessible working space, and any works not currently on display will be kept in an open storeroom between the galleries.
The exhibition features works whose materiality or concepts are related explicitly to the artists’ life. An example of this is the work of Abraham Cruzvillegas and its intricate tie to the concept of ‘Autoconstrucción’; an opportunistic and resourceful strategy that seeks to reuse, repair and appropriate material for the construction of buildings, usually in deprived urban areas with limited resources. Having grown up in Mexico City, surrounded by these constructs, Cruzvillegas’ art has become permeated with this ideology, which now defines his creative practice.
The selection principle for all works in the show introduces a specific enquiry: How does the content or material, which is ‘not art’, become part of an artwork? The methods and ways of presenting this condition might allow us to think about the path of art's accretion. Their examination might allow us to determine what is really left from their origins and their partial or complete idiosyncrasies.
The exhibition will produce two publications: Congratulations, Lee Johnson
Naming Rights at Thomas Dane Gallery, Catalogue
On the 13th September, between 6:00pm and 8.30pm a public event Open House, will involve a music performance at 7:30pm, the composition of which will mimic the structure of the exhibition.
Founded in 2015, Naming Rights is located in a housing estate in Central London. Naming Rights is an artwork as exhibition space, with simple, specific material preconditions. Its rules are intended to create more direct and more personal interactions between audience and singular artworks, and to bring economic and aesthetic contradictions to bear on the art on display and its context. Fundraising strategies for Naming Rights are transparent and also part of the general artwork. Though the space foregrounds the practices of a range of artists, corollary objects and events produced at Naming Rights are the work of Dustin Ericksen. Through attention to funding and focus on social engagement, the programme at Naming Rights reflects upon the problems that occur when both art and the mechanisms of its presentation are simultaneously aestheticised.
For exhibitions and sales enquiries please contact François Chantala: francois@thomasdanegallery.com
For press inquiries please contact Saskia Coombs: saskia@thomasdanegallery.com

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 12pm-6pm or by appointment Admission: Free
Tel: +44 (0) 20 79252505
Nearest Tube: Green Park or Piccadilly Circus